William Blake Essay

Author Thomas Wolfe defined the true Romantic feeling as “not the desire to escape life but to prevent life from escaping you”. William Wordsworth’s poetry clearly captures this definition; he uses powerful and meaningful vocabulary to express this desire.

In his poem Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth writes about his visit to the valley of River Wye and the ruins of Tintern Abbey with his sister. You can certainly tell that he is at peace with nature when he composed the poem—he uses nice, serene vocabulary like: “These beauteous forms, through a long absence, have not been to me as is a landscape to a blind man’s eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din of towns and cities, I have owed to them in hours of weariness, sensations sweet, felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; and passing even into my purer mind, with tranquil restoration—feelings too of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, as have no slight or trivial influence on that best portions of a good man’s life.”(709).

The Prelude was composed during the early days of the French Revolution. It’s a rather optimistic and hopeful poem. You can tell just by the way he writes and describes every aspect of France’s “golden hours”. Wordsworth writes: “O pleasant exercise of hope and joy! For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood upon our side, us who were strong in love! Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very Heaven! O times, in which the meager, stale, forbidding ways of custom, law, and statute, took at once the attraction of a country in romance!”(714).

London 1802 is more of a criticism of England. In the poem, Wordsworth basically talks down about the country as well as the men who live there. He suggests that seventeenth-century English poet John Milton’s return would better the country: “Milton! Thou should’st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, fireside, the...

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...analyzed and even criticized. During this time, several poets were kind of actively involved in a literary movement known as Romanticism and they were WilliamBlake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Samuel Coleridge and other famous poets in his time.
WilliamBlake as one of the members of the movement can be considered as a very radical poet during that time for he was somehow preoccupied with the issues of liberalism, radicalism and also nationalism later on. He was portrayed as someone who was hostile towards all the revolutions and series of oppressions that had happened. During his lifetime, he was known as a Romantic poet, a painter and also an engraver. Although he was unlikely to be prominently recognized throughout his lifetime, he is now somewhat a renowned figure of Romantic era owing to his literary works and visual arts. It was said that myriad of his works are very eccentric and complex for the people back then in the late 18th century and early 19th century. According to one of his best companions, Henry Crabb Robinson, Blake was a genius artist and poet that his wits and intelligence were indescribable. Apparently, he was also considered as a Romantic poet due to the reason that many of his poems were composed illuminating these situations or conditions of living in the England throughout his days.
WilliamBlake was perceived as someone who is...

...poetic language, WilliamBlake expressed his
abhorrence of the Church's deep-rooted stance on faith; such a stance on
Christianity was considered blasphemous, but he could not be charged with a
crime. He believed that with true spirituality, the individual could fully
engage in their faith and attain eternal salvation without the intrusion of
organized religion—for the Church is solely concerned with subduing
Christians with an orthodox emphasis on reason. Its rigid practice of
faith, Blake denounced, actually is a restrictive barrier to the stairway
to heaven. He, instead, viewed imagination as the foundation to
spirituality, the bridge between the worldly body and the divine soul;
creative energy, thus, is the simplest yet most direct connection to God.
Readers may initially annotate Blake's set of poems called the Songs of
Innocence and the Songs of Experience as an ironic juxtaposition of the
innocent, pastoral world of childhood against the experienced, adult world
of corruption and repression, but Blake is reflecting something deeper in
meaning. In these oppositely related volumes of Songs, WilliamBlake is not
simply evoking an ironic contrast of good and evil, but subtly reflecting
on the nature of Christianity, ultimately arguing that, whereas organized
religion tends to suppress the power of energy and imagination with the
arrogance of reason, true spirituality...

...WilliamBlake
“A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.”
Bree Foreman
Period 3
January 9, 2011
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents............................................................1
Research Paper……………………………………………..2
Research Paper……………………………………………..3
Research Paper...............................................................4
Research Paper…………………………….……………….5
Works Cited…………..………………………………………6
Appendix………………………………………………………7
WilliamBlake once said, “A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.” WilliamBlake was a man of great words, who was generally looked down upon for his different writing skills. His different writing skills made him look insane and mad, when really his skills were out brought out the true genius behind the words. In William Blake's poetry he involves and creates characters of God, angels, and magical things; his subject matter sharing the ideas about human nature and society through us of unique themes and diction to help portray the challenges faced in his poems.
“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour,” this was a quote stated by WilliamBlake. WilliamBlake was born November 28, 1757 in London. William...

...WilliamBlake: The Tyger analysis
To understand "The Tiger" fully, you need to know Blake's symbols.
The title seems to be quite simple. It lets us know that the poem is about a tiger. So, we expect it to be just that, about a tiger. However, as we start reading, it becomes clear pretty quickly that this is not just any tiger. It could be a symbol Blake uses to make a far deeper point than something like tigers are scary. It is one of the poem of his collection named: songs of experience. The main theme of the poem is focused on the creator of the tiger and the dwell aspects of the creation. Blake's story of creation differs from the Genesis account. The familiar world was created only after a cosmic catastrophe.
The Tiger is a poem made up of questions. There are no less than thirteen question marks and only one full sentence that ends with a period. It is about having your reason overwhelmed at once by the beauty and the horror of the natural world. The poet repeats the word tiger to emphasize on the meaning and to bring a rythm to the opening of the poem. The repetition of the words also attract the attention of the reader. The poet wonders what created this violent ferocious creature. He referes to the creator as immortal because the tiger is so heartless that it could turn against its creator. That is why the creator has to be immortal to survive an attack from such a fierce creature.
The poet even admires the...

...The poem 'The Echoing Green' is written by WilliamBlake. It is taken from SONGS OF INNOCENCE. It is divine voice of childhood unchallenged by the test and doubts of later years. Blake expresses in simple and lovely diction the happiness and innocence of a child's first thoughts about. This is a pictorial poem. 'The Echoing Green' is a poem about a grassy field on a warm morning in late spring. The poet gives a very beautiful description of a dawn and morning of spring. The spring represents the life. Morning is the beginning of life and the dark evening is the end. This poem is a blend of child like innocence and grayness of later years. It is symbolic and draws a contrast between youth and old age. Blake has expressed broad meaning of the playground. The children are carefree and they are not surrounded by any kind of worries because worries are associated with old age and pleasures with childhood. The children are busy in games. They are showing vibrant attitude and display high energy in their games. They are laughing and thoroughly enjoying themselves. Their voices echo in the field. They travel on the wings of leisurely fancy and float far into the realm of calm and sweet childhood joy; unaware of the pains and cutting realization they are going to encounter as the years fall in on them.
The nature also seems to join in with their joy as the sun shines with sheer brilliance over the playing children. The azure...

...﻿English Assignment Year 10
Name: Brandon Clark
WilliamBlake was born in London on November 28, 1757, Blake passed away on 12 August 1827. James hes father, a hosier, and Catherine Blake hes mother. Two of his six siblings died in infancy. From early childhood, Blake spoke of having visions at four he saw God "put his head to the window"; around age nine, while walking through the countryside, he saw a tree filled with angels. Although his parents tried to discourage him from "lying," they did observe that he was different from his peers and did not force him to attend conventional school. He learned to read and write at home. At age ten, Blake expressed a wish to become a painter, so his parents sent him to drawing school. Two years later, Blake began writing poetry. When he turned fourteen, he apprenticed with an engraver because art school proved too costly. One of Blake's assignments as apprentice was to sketch the tombs at Westminster Abbey, exposing him to a variety of Gothic styles from which he would draw inspiration throughout his career. After his seven-year term ended, he studied briefly at the Royal Academy.
Blake's first printed work, Poetical Sketches (1783), is a collection of apprentice verse, mostly imitating classical models. The poems protest against war, tyranny, and King George III's treatment of the American colonies.
William...

...Writing for the Humanities Flaka Sejdaj
English 21001, Section P Due: December 17, 2009
Professor: Zach Samalin
WilliamBlake Poem
WilliamBlake, the worlds famous English poet (1757- 1827). He never limited himself to a title where you would say he’s poet of only romance or drama but whatever went wept through his soul he would engrave it in words. Joy and sorrow are opposite each other yet Blake develops poems from each aspect. The two poems I will be talking about are Infant Joy and Infant Sorrow.
Infant Joy seems as if it’s a poem about an Infant named Joy. It is very perky and jolly. It appears as if there are two speakers one the Baby and the other asking how should they name the baby which probably would be the mother. It’s an exchange of words yet not having a hard time responding to each other and just going with the flow. Also, that they are talking about a new life very happily and it shows that they are not alone. In contrast of the Infant of Joy is the Infant of Sorrow. The Infant of sorrow is all about weeping and how dangerous things are and how unhappy the infant was. In infant sorrow, the baby is alone and telling how sad everything is describing the mother and fathers experiences but it’s not the same as Infant Joy where the mother shares the happiness with the infant. Noticing both poems, In Infant Joy...

...jeruselum
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
The poem by WilliamBlake that is generally known as “Jerusalem” is probably the best known of his works, although it was not given that title by its author. Blake did write a poem called “Jerusalem”, but it is one of his immensely long “Prophetic Books”, written between 1804 and 1820, that is little read today.
What we know as “Jerusalem” forms part of the preface (otherwise in prose) to another of his Prophetic Books, namely “Milton”, that dates from 1804-08. The sixteen lines that concern us have no title, but, as they concern the building of a “new Jerusalem”, the name has stuck in the public imagination and everyone understands “Blake’s Jerusalem” to mean this poem.
The fame of the poem was assured in 1916 when set to music by Sir Hubert Parry. It became a patriotic hymn during World War I and the anthem of the Women’s Institute. It has also been suggested as a...